Young Liberals (United Kingdom)
| Young Liberals | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Chairperson | Charlie Kingsbury |
| Founded | 1993 (as LDYS) |
| Headquarters | 8–10 Great George Street, London SW1P 3AE |
| Ideology |
Liberalism (British) Social liberalism Social justice Internationalism |
| Mother party | Liberal Democrats |
| International affiliation | International Federation of Liberal and Radical Youth (IFLRY) |
| European affiliation | European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) |
Young Liberals is the youth and student group of the Liberal Democrats, a political party in the United Kingdom. Its predecessors include the National League of Young Liberals (NLYL), founded in 1903 and the Union of Liberal Students (ULS), founded in 1920. The organisation was previously called Liberal Youth but went through a process of renaming at the end of 2016.
Liberal Democrat members who are under 26 years old or attending higher/further education institutions are automatically members of Young Liberals if they agree to share this information at registration. The group is financially supported by the party and has offices in the Liberal Democrats' London headquarters.
The constitution of the Liberal Democrats requires an affiliated youth and student wing. Accordingly, Young Liberals is a Specified Associated Organisation (SAO) to the party. The Liberal Democrat Party constitution grants Young Liberals at least one position on local party executives as well as one position on federal committees such as the Federal Board and Federal International Relations Committee. In addition, Liberal Youth is also granted a number of voting representatives at the Federal Conference of the Liberal Democrat party based on the number of members, as are local parties. This privilege is extended to the separate Welsh Conferences, Conferences of English regions and to the Liberal Democrats' English Council (the confederal body through which the regional parties of England make joint decisions).
The organisation was formerly known as Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (LDYS). Spring 2008 saw LDYS renamed as Liberal Youth, at an event hosted by the then Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Liberal Youth is the successor organisation to all the youth and student wings of the Liberal Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, including the Union of Liberal Students and the National League of Young Liberals, the parties' youth wings of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Liberal Party and the SDP each had separate student and youth wings until their merger in 1988; these merged in England to form the Student Liberal Democrats and the Young Liberal Democrats of Scotland. In Scotland, there was a separate Scottish Young Liberal Democrats (which also included students of all ages). Liberal Democrat Youth and Students was itself created in 1993 from a merger of the Student Liberal Democrats and the Young Liberal Democrats of England who had shared many resources in the run-up. The merger talks were overseen by a committee which included Sarah Gurling, who later married the late Charles Kennedy. LDYS reorganised into a federal structure in 2002 and then admitted Scottish Young Liberal Democrats as its Scottish federal unit later that year - forming a single GB-wide organisation for the first time since the combined ULS-NLYL committees of the 1970s.
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